BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter Two
Dōrodokia, Elites, and the People’s Authority
508/7-404 BCE
In 463/2 the Athenian stratēgos Cimon returned to Athens after a successful
campaign fighting the Persians in the Chersonese and subduing a revolt by the Thasians.
Apparently not everything had gone according to plan. Upon his return, the people
elected special prosecutors to bring a charge of dōrodokia against the general. As
Plutarch records, Cimon apparently had had it “within his grasp” (parasxo/n) to “easily”
(r(a|di/wj) mount an attack against Macedon (Plut. Cim. 14.3). He withdrew, instead, and
the Athenians assumed that he must have received dōra from the Macedonian king (Plut.
Cim. 14.2-3). Though convicted by the Assembly, he was subsequently acquitted by the
Areopagus Court and soon elected to a new command as general. 1
Despite its oddities, the trial itself is remembered perhaps more for its aftermath
than as a significant historical moment in its own right. As Aristotle’s Constitution of
Athens explains, when Cimon was acquitted, there was considerable public outcry at
Athens (AP 25, 27.1). In particular, one Ephialtes led the charge, first publicly accusing
members of the Areopagus court of corruption because they had acquitted Cimon and
then moving to pass legislation that stripped the Areopagus of certain powers, including
the oversight of officials. Read this way, with the benefit of hindsight Cimon’s trial
becomes a critical catalyst in the development of the democracy: not so much an
important or unusual event in itself, but a legal means to a political end. As the story has
1 Plut. Cim. 14.1-4; Plut. Per. 10.6; cf. AP 27.1. For scholarly accounts of Cimon’s trial, see Roberts
(1982: 55-6), Ostwald (1986: 41-2), Carawan (1987: 202-5), Raaflaub (2007: 113, 137-8). I follow
Carawan’s reconstruction of the procedure of the trial; see further Chapter Seven below.
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